On this week's episode, I interview my friend Zack Turner — who's a Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Slack. Me and Zack go way back — we worked together at Kiva.org in San Francisco back in the day, and he was a groomsman at my wedding back in 2010! And he's worked in enterprise sales for almost as long as that — first at Box (he joined back when it was still called Box.net!), and more recently at Slack. He's worked both as a Sales Engineer, in "frontline sales", and as a Sales Manager.
Zack's answer to "what makes someone awesome at sales" was interestingly different — first, he gave the Box framework, then the Slack framework, and then he added in his own flavor.
Box had three principles:
(1) Business Acumen — can you understand a customer's business, how they make money, and what they're trying to accomplish?
(2) Technical Aptitude — can you take your technology, and understand how your product can solve your customers' challenges?
(3) Grit — do you have patience and persistence? Zack referenced this TED Talk by Angela Duckworth as an inspiring illustration.
I guess the Slack sales team is 33.33% more effective than the Box team(?) because they have four principles:
(1) Smart — the ability to understand customers and the technology.
(2) Hard working — the willingness to put in the effort to learn the details of the product, and learn the craft of sales.
(3) Humble — not that you don't have "power" and capability — but that you wield them with control. You use your power in a way that is strategic and intentional. And you're also willing to listen to coaching and feedback to improve.
(4) Collaborative — can you work with other people really well? Slack has a multi-threaded sales cycle (i.e. relationships with multiple stakeholders at the customer — from senior executives to more junior employees, etc.), so this is especially important.
To these "corporate" frameworks, Zack added three more of his own:
(1) Fire in your belly — do you have a deep desire to perform, to find a way? As Zack put it, "Because sales is so hard, because you get more no's than yes's, because you lose more than you win — it's very easy for folks to give up, or be discouraged, or not put their full effort in. And people who have that deep determination just do well over a longer period of time. And my point of view is that people either have that or they don't have it."
(2) Process-oriented — the ability to figure out and implement a process that's repeatable, and scalable, so you get more and more leverage over time.
(3) Malleability — Zack has seen a lot of evolution at the companies he's worked for — especially Box, where he worked for nine years. He has been successful in his career over the years because he has demonstrated an ability (and a willingness) to improve and adapt over time. In the early days of Box, salespeople needed to be evangelists for the product and the concept. Over time, as the company grew, processes and systems became more important. Zack's answer to the question of how he made this transition was interesting: "I had a vision for it. I had a vision for wanting to be somebody who could evolve through different phases of the company's growth". Zack talked about leadership transitions as times when malleability is acutely important — when different leaders join a company, a lot of people are uncomfortable with that change, resist it, and ultimately leave. But Zack was very intentional about wanting to be someone who worked with the new leadership, to support them in effecting changes, as the organization moved to a new level of scale.
And some rapid-fire questions…
What do you look for when you're hiring salespeople?
Zack mentioned an interesting interview framework that he uses in hiring. Based on a book called "Who: The A Method for Hiring", it involves inviting the candidate to tell the chronological story of their resume (or life), and asking similar questions for every phase — "what were the highlights? What was hard? What did you learn? How did you perform?", etc. Per Zack, you start to see patterns emerging (the candidate's strengths, weaknesses, etc.), that you might not not otherwise see in a normal interview.
What's your best story around closing a deal?
Just when Zack was about to close a large deal, the client was suddenly embroiled in a very public "front-page news" crisis. It was all over the financial press. It seemed like the deal was almost certainly dead, and Zack's boss, and boss's boss were all but sure the deal was not going to happen. But the client negotiated a billion-dollar credit package, and the next day the CFO signed Zack's contract. I guess the lesson of the story is: Keep the faith!
What's the biggest mistake you've made in your sales career?
Zack basically dodged this question. Crafty.
What's a controversial opinion you have about sales?
Customers have most of the power these days. It used to be that sellers controlled a lot of the information — through RFP processes and things like that. Now there is so much information and content out there that customers have access to. For example, there are Slack workplaces where CIOs are messaging each other, and sharing their prices. So the majority of the decision is made before a customer engages with a salesperson.
Who's the best salesperson you know — and why?
Zack mentioned a few names, but the common thread was that they made things about the other person (the customer) vs. themselves.
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